The Box
by da-angel729
Summary: She found the box in the back of the storage closet on the second floor.


**Author's Note:** Written for the January 2011 **Women of the Gate Ficathon** at **gate_women** won LiveJournal with a prompt of _Sam. Bunny slippers and telescopes. Gen_. Set in early season 2, after _Secrets_ and _The Tok'ra_. As always, feedback and con crit appreciated!

**The Box**

She found the box in the back of the storage closet on the second floor.

Sam had been granted a week's leave to put her father's affairs in order, after his blending with Selmak and subsequent move to the Tok'ra base. Daniel had offered to help, but Sam needed to do this alone and had refused.

"We'll come over with dinner," he had insisted, and she'd reluctantly agreed.

But that wouldn't be for a few hours, Sam estimated as she looked at the box, neatly labeled "Sam's Stuff" in her father's handwriting. She'd brought it downstairs, and placed it on her coffee table.

And stared at it.

She'd had no idea any of her things remained in the house. Sam had packed up her own stuff before she'd left for the Air Force Academy, and was certain she'd gotten all of it. So why did her father have a box with her name on it?

Sam continued to stare at it, wondering what her father found of hers that was so important he hadn't gotten rid of it. _Be brave, Sam_, she heard in her head, and she wondered when her mind began sounding like her mother. _You can look_.

Taking a deep breath, Sam reached for the scissors and sliced the tape open, lifting back the flaps. Wondering what her father had cared enough to save.

It was a small telescope, covered in bubble wrap.

The telescope was real, she knew, and it had come in a box advertising it as "Child's First Telescope". She remembered the Christmas morning Dad had given it to her. He'd been so proud—and happy—to share an interest with her, and they'd set it up in the attic.

She'd been six years old. But when she looked through the telescope, saw a close up of the moon, Sam knew she wanted to be up there. In space, with the stars and the _space_ and the silence.

Sam picked up the telescope, started to unwrap it when she saw a flash of pink in the box, underneath some faded tissue paper. She moved the paper aside, though she was fairly sure she knew what it was.

She was right.

A pair of bunny slippers, once bright pink but now faded, sat in the box. One was missing an eye—Mark had done that, though she couldn't remember how—and the other had only half an ear left—the result of their collie Sunshine chewing through the rest. Sam picked up the slippers, set them on the table next to the box.

And burst into tears.

Her mother's slippers, the pair given to her mother by her father the very first Christmas the two of them had spent together. She'd never gotten a new pair, but had worn these for the twenty-four years her parents had spent together. Her father had saved them.

She didn't know why. More, she didn't _understand_ why.

Sam needed to understand things.

Why would he choose these to save, when he'd had the rest of her mother's stuff out of the house barely a month after the funeral? Sam wiped her eyes and stood up, moving toward the kitchen, and picked up the telescope as she walked by, wanting to check it out to see if it worked. She needed coffee.

Exhaling on a sigh, Sam prepared coffee and considered her options. She needed to know what her father had been thinking. He'd be at the SGC in a few weeks, when he and Garshaw arrived to formally announce the treaty between them. She could talk to him then.

But she didn't know if she'd have the nerve to ask him. They didn't really talk, and she couldn't imagine Major General Jacob Carter explaining his thought process—even with Selmak in his head.

She wouldn't, she decided, ask right now. Her father was adjusting to his new life, and she knew how difficult it was for her to comprehend the reality of her job, her life, when she'd first started in the program.

But even as she picked the slippers up, inhaled the slightly musty scent of them, before putting them back in the box and shoving the box back in the closet, she knew she'd never ask her father.

She couldn't break the habit of a lifetime.


End file.
